...Hallyu began roughly 12 years ago when the rest of Asia discovered Korean soap operas. One of the breakthrough dramas was a series 'Winter Sonata' starring Choi Ji-woo & Bae Young-Joon. After that, more Korean dramas saw their way to foreign shores and Korean films and music started to follow suit. Korean marketing people started to see a Korea-centric trend. They dubbed this flow "The Korean Wave" or Hallyu....

13.12.12

[News] Sakurai Sho to star in the sequel to “Kamisama no Karute”.

[News] Sakurai Sho to star in the sequel to “Kamisama no Karute”.Cr. - tokyohive

It was announced that there will be a sequel to the movie “Kamisama no Karute“, which was released back in August of last year starring Arashi’s Sakurai Sho. The sequel “Kamisama no Karute 2” is scheduled for release in 2014, and Sakurai and Miyazaki Aoi, who played as his wife, will continue participating in it. Sakurai said, “This is a very precious work to me. I am glad to be able to participate in this again.”

“Kamisama no Karute” is based on a novel series by novelist and real life doctor Natsukawa Sosuke. It revolves around a physician ‘Kurihara Ichito’ (Sakurai) who puts all his effort on medical support in the countryside, in Matsumoto, Nagano. There have been three volumes released so far, and 2,200,000 copies were sold in total. The previous movie also made 1.9 billion yen (23,013,565.8915 USD as of today) at the box office.

The sequel will be based on the second volume of the series which will be set a few months later from the previous movie, and there will be an addition to the cast members. Ichito’s friend from college, and a physician ‘Shindo Tatsuya’, who comes to Ichito’s hospital from Tokyo, will be played by Fujiwara Tatsuya. This will be the first time for Fujiwara to play the role of a doctor and a father.

Other newly added cast members are Fukiishi Kazue, Ichige Yoshie, and Hamada Gaku, while Emoto Akira and Harada Taizo, who appeared in the previous one, will continue their appearances in the sequel.

‘Ichito’ tries his best on medical activities at the hospital that is on alert 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, and ‘Shindo’ prioritizes his family and is unable to be reached after leaving the hospital at the stated time. Through the conflict of opinions between ‘Ichito’ and ‘Shindo’, the movie will answer the questions of, ‘what is it like to be a doctor?’, ‘what is the meaning of work?’, and ‘what is the meaning of family?’

Another core plot of the sequel will be the love between ‘Ichito’ and his wife ‘Haruna’. In the previous movie, the couple found out ‘Haruna’ was pregnant, but in this sequel, they will depict ‘Haruna’ giving birth as well. Miyazaki commented, “Being able to watch over ‘Ichito-san’, and being able to live as ‘Haruna-san’, I am looking forward to it very much.”

Reportedly, the distributor Toho is considering making another sequel even after the “2″.